East Palestine is what the future looks like
"We basically nuked a town."
I view the government like hiring an attorney. At the end of the day, a functioning government is the only thing capable of stopping the rise of fascism that will inevitably be the result of the American experiment.
But the problem with that analogy is that attorneys can go to prison for negligent malfeasance. That isn’t the case with the government, as shown in the ruination of East Palestine, Ohio.
Two months ago, Joe Biden and a Democratic Congress broke a potential railroad strike weeks before Christmas. Workers, for those that cared to listen, warned that skeleton crews, long hours, and insufficient regulations would lead to the kinds of disaster that have unfolded in East Palestine and other places in the state you probably haven’t heard about.
From Jennifer Rodriguez of wkbn.com:
EAST PALESTINE, Ohio (WKBN) — First News was recently informed of three more chemicals that were on the Norfolk Southern train that derailed in East Palestine just over a week ago — and we are being told that those chemicals are dangerous.
“We basically nuked a town with chemicals so we could get a railroad open,” said Sil Caggiano, a hazardous materials specialist.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sent a letter to Norfolk Southern stating that ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, ethylhexyl acrylate and isobutylene were also in the rail cars that were derailed, breached and/or on fire.
Caggiano says ethylhexyl acrylate is especially worrisome. He says it’s a carcinogen and contact with it can cause burning and irritation in the skin and eyes. Breathing it in can irritate the nose and throat and cause coughing and shortness of breath.
I stare into the moral abyss that is Ohio politics for a living. Sometimes to the detriment of my personal relationships and mental health.
But this crisis is almost too much even for me.
How do you square a hazardous materials specialist speaking in blunt language that a 10-year-old could understand — “we basically nuked a town” — with headlines from The Washington Post about residents wondering if it’s safe to return?
Norfolk Southern executives should be forced to live in East Palestine until we find out. But that will never happen because business executives don’t go to prison anymore. Especially for corporate malfeasance on this scale.
And in Southern Norfolk’s case, it’s already positioned to buy Cincinnati’s public railroad!
Residents of East Palestine won’t be that lucky since the only ones staying around will be those with no option to leave.
And then in 10 years, when the total consequences of this disaster become known, the federal and state government will work to deny paying the victims what they’re ultimately owed.
People wailing on social media about how “nobody is covering East Palestine” are either lying for engagement or telling on their piss-poor habits of news consumption. This disaster has been covered by national to local media, with the latter understandably doing around-the-clock coverage. A simple Google search will prove that.
But all the coverage in the world won’t change that East Palestine is the future of America. This was a failure of government on every single level—and nothing will be fundamentally altered to prevent something like this from happening again.
From Prem Thakker of newrepublic.com:
Amanda Greathouse, who resides near the crash site, evacuated about one hour after the incident. She only returned home on February 10, a full week later, to retrieve personal effects like bank and ID cards. Even then, as she and her family walked through the home donning N-95 masks and gloves, an ominous odor pervaded. After leaving, her eyes burned and itched, her throat was sore, and she had a rash; her husband and both her sisters had migraines.
The next day, the family went to Norfolk Southern’s community family assistance center to obtain the $1,000 convenience check. After a four-hour wait, Greathouse was informed they needed more documents. The family was forced to return to their home again to retrieve additional documents, and left with renewed symptoms.
Reports of suffering animals, from dogs and cats to fish and chickens, continue to accumulate. Taylor Holzer, an animal caretaker, lost one of his foxes. Others are in poor condition with faces swollen, stomachs upset, and eyes watering. Holzer’s dog, who hadn’t returned home until after the evacuation order was lifted, has begun coughing and gagging. “He will go into coughing fits so hard his front legs bow and he looks so uncomfortable,” Holzer said.
Would you want to return to your house in that scenario, even if the corporation responsible for your plight tells you it’s safe to do so?
Because I keep coming back to what that hazardous materials specialist said — that “we basically nuked a town” — and I don’t understand why I would eat any produce or beef produced in that area ever again, let alone live there.
Governor Mike DeWine, one of the most ruthless operators in the state's history, will probably hold a press conference at some point and, in his typical Sleepy Tea Bear fashion, tell us that everything is back to normal. That it’s okay to drink tap water or eat the beef of a cow that lived on tainted grass.
That’s what the government has to say, apparently. Because no government official has had the decency to tell us what our lying eyes already saw: East Palestine is gone as we know it.
Anything else is ultimately public relations work for the criminal entities responsible for this ecological disaster. And that includes our alleged government officials, too.
Once again, we see Mike DeWine's incompetence and lack of leadership or compassion laid bare.
has anyone tried creating a political economy that doesn't feature these kinds of disasters as an inevitable, designed outcome, we should try that next